Everything moved quickly. Joe went from slumped against a wall to laying on a couch, stripped down to his undergarments. Brittney had already fed him one potion, but was now applying a second potion to open wounds in the hopes that she could direct recovery. Nora was giving him small amounts of water. He was conscious, but just barely. He made a motion with his right arm, the least injured of his limbs pointing to another room. Billy walked off to check it out. I felt paralyzed, just for a moment, but it was terrifying. I could lose yet one more friend.

  Brittney looked to be getting ready to use her healing ability, and it hit me. “Brittney, try to pour all your mana into your next heal.”

  The all looked at me like I was crazy, but Nora narrowed her eyes. “There’s something you haven’t told us.”

  “Yeah. It had to do when I confronted the half demon girl masquerading as military intelligence.”

  Nora waited a moment, a very brief one at that, “AND!”

  “The mental influence was overwhelming. It was bad, oh so very bad. I nearly fell to it. In a panic, I pushed all my mana into my mental resistance. Flooded my brain as a shield.”

  Nora kept motioning to get on with it. She looked from Joe’s bleeding form to me, and then motioned for me to get on with it. “Neal, we don’t have time for a monologue.”

  “Sorry, I used all of my mana. The system gave me a passive ability to use my charisma to increase my chances to resist mental influence and control. I try not to think about it much. The whole situation felt crazy.”

  Nora Sighed, “Fine. Brittney do what he is saying. Picture your healing ability and everything you know about healing, medicine, first aid, bandages, and every damn medical TV show you’ve ever watched. Then flood all your mana through those ideas and into Joe’s body.”

  Brittney blinked before nodding. “Umm, if you say so. I don’t really watch medical shows; I prefer baking shows. I guess that isn’t what you really wanted to hear right now.” She was shaking slightly. Fear and anxiety came together in her, at least from my perspective. She was breathing heavily, her chest inflating harder and faster than before.

  I wanted to help her, but the only words that came to mind were, “Close your eyes Britt, put your hands on Joe, and just concentrate on healing him. Keep pushing mana until you have none left. It will work.” I wanted to tell her to have faith in herself, but did I have faith in myself, or her, or anyone else. The pressure she put on herself on a daily basis was massive. I hoped that this wasn’t the moment that she failed due to too much pressure.

  Brittney followed directions very well. For the little time he knew her, she always synthesized information and processed it exceedingly fast. She put her hands on Joe’s chest close to where his heart was. She looked deep in concentration. In previous uses of her ability a faint blue-green glow emanated from her hands for a handful of seconds and the person was a little more healed than they were before. This time was different. The blue-green glow was still there, but it slowly spread from her hands this time. It was no longer localized. The glow snaked along wounds sealing skin back together after closing blood vessels. Neal didn’t need to be a doctor to see what was happening. The sound of cracking was scary, but there was no easy way to tell what that was. Brittney’s breathing became labored, and then the glow faded before she slumped over Joe’s chest. Fortunately, his chest started rising and falling at a normal regular rate. Perhaps the worst was over. I didn’t know if it would work, but Brittney made it happen. I was relieved.

  That was possibly the greatest thing we’ve done so far. Brittney was drained of mana to the point that she passed out, but at least she expanded her abilities and saved the day. Joe’s breathing very even now, but then he groaned. “What the hell?” He opened an eye and saw Brittney slumped over his chest. He looked about until he saw the rest of us, “What… what happened?”

  Nora smirked, “You got saved by a thirteen year old girl.” She paused, “Brittney is quite amazing.” Frank lifted Brittney off of the ground to find her a couch to rest for a few minutes. Nora turned to me, “So, when were you going to explain that we could create abilities?”

  I shrugged, “I thought it was more of a fluke or dumb luck. Glad to know there is reasoning behind it.”

  Nora continued, “You know this means that we can shape abilities to work within one or more of our affinities to create abilities. There isn’t exactly a limit to what we can create. Gaming books with spell lists are only the beginning.” She looked like she wanted to get through this recon we were doing, so she could get back to making up new abilities.

  “Didn’t you already figure all that out with detect mana”

  “No, I didn’t.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “I found out that I could use the Staff ability as a blueprint for learning the ability myself. I was simply copying what the staff had shown me a dozen times or more. This means we aren’t constrained to what we have found in items. I could very well create force bolt. It wouldn’t be nearly as strong as the wand, but it would be something I know without ever needing the wand again. I solved that riddle with the staff and detect mana. Now though, I could find a spell in a gaming book and recreate it, assuming I have the appropriate affinities. Totally more open ended.”

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  She was right, sky was the limit to what we could create. However, we would need to have open ability slots to do so. None of this mattered if we were maxxed out on abilities. A groaning Joe brought our focus back to him. Ability discussions could wait. “How do you feel, Joe.”

  “Like I was shot, stabbed, and nearly magicked to death.” At least near death hadn’t changed Joe’s communication style. He groaned and stretched a little bit before wincing at a pain in his chest. “I’ll survive. Several scouts didn’t. We took out the first 3 groups, but there is still a fourth group.”

  “I thought there were three groups.”

  “We were wrong. There was a group over in the neighborhood of houses. All four of the groups have been sending patrols. You fired guns, that was a bad idea.”

  Explosion started sounding off not too far away. I looked outside and saw explosions booming above the tree line separating us from Manchester Road. “Yeah, that isn’t going to be a problem. You said there was a group of lupin over in the neighborhoods behind these industrial buildings?”

  “I guess… not. Yes, though to lupin over in the neighborhood. I cleaned them all out. I gathered citizens in a few houses near here. They can move quickly once we make our move to the station.” He still looked like he wasn’t going to be in any shape to go fighting lupin for a little bit. “Use the safe and danger signs to get you to the last set of buildings before the train yard. Have everyone strike together.” With that last bit of words Joe laid back down on the couch and fell asleep. I’ve never seen him fall asleep quite like that, and we’ve been around each other a lot these past few years. He must be completely exhausted. He has probably been going strong since yesterday morning with little to no break. I was in awe of him doing all that he did to get us this far. I was also very happy that we could save him in the end.

  My thoughts were interrupted by my radio, “Cassland, this is First Squad, are you in the dog pound?”

  I chuckled; Ted would call an unusual animal removal service a dog pound. “Yes. Didn’t you see us go in?”

  “Yes, but I wanted to be sure. We’re headed over we need to finish up the damn wolf problem.” Ted never did mince words. Every time I spoke to him, he was annoyed about lupin. Or was it he was just annoyed that the lupin were sneakier and the orcs were stronger? I didn’t have to wait long as first squad, minus Hank and Katnessa, plus second squad showed up to the building. Ted stepped in and took a look at Joe on one couch, with Brittney on another. “What happened to them?”

  “No biggie. Joe almost died from injuries, but Brittney drained all her mana to learn a new healing ability to keep him alive.” I tried to say that as nonchalantly as I could, but I failed by the end. I grinned at him.

  “New healing. The troops will be happy to hear that our Girl Scout Extraordinaire really is as good as advertised.” He seemed very happy with that explanation. He mouthed ‘new healing ability’ and shook his head while a tiny smile played across his lips.

  “Ted, it looks like Joe left S and D symbols to represent safe and danger on the buildings. He said it should be down to the last grouping as well as any other troops they happen to have. We have missiles striking for a bit. So, lets use that to go kill the last of these accursed wolves. I would really like to see Fenton today.”

  Ted just nodded at my words and went to huddle up with the two squads. Will came up to me in that time, “Neal, I went ahead and used two of my ability uses to drain the lupin spellcaster over there. It’s sort of sorcerer, but it looks like it needs you need to have constitution and charisma. I also don’t think you have chaos, lupin, force, or arcane. So, it’s kind of a no go for most people. I haven’t met a whole bunch of people that get constitution and charisma, in addition to any of those others.”

  “It was a bust. I can accept that. Sometime soon we will find a class that will work for me. How close are you to level 7?”

  “Just over half. I should hit it within a few days.” He nodded, almost happy that he was getting all those levels. It was at least some sort of accomplishment. He would be a very early person to level 10. The number of abilities that he would be able to generate in a day from the enemy would be awesome. I knew he was always going to be a target for Major Grant. That was something I just needed to keep in the back of my mind.

  “Lets get everyone together. I’ll check on Brittney to see if she has finished her nap.” I stepped over to the other side of the room where Brittney was laying down. Nora was next to her, and she looked at me as I approached.

  “Neal, she is still resting. I will stay to watch over her and Joe.”

  “I think it is better to leave Billy and someone else. You bring Fireball to the playing field. I’m not going to underestimate the value of such an ability.”

  “Are you saying you only want me there because of fireball?” She asked, yet I couldn’t tell how serious she was with that statement.

  “I want you there because you’re the smartest of any of us, you’re my friend, I trust you, AND you bring cool spells into play.” I shot back at her with my serious face. “I don’t want to go there and not have all the heavy hitters and people I trust with me.”

  “Fair enough.” Was she looking for some sort of positive reinforcement? Maybe we were all a little more frazzled than I had originally thought.

  We left Will and Billy with Brittney and Joe. While I wanted to continue to advance Will’s leveling, it wasn’t critical to do that just this exact second. We made our way between destroyed husks of cars and rubble from somewhere. We psyched ourselves up for this fight, but it wasn’t nearly as difficult as we thought it would be. Everyone was level 5 or higher at this point. We had several people at levels 6 and 7. Even twenty lupin scouts and warriors were no match for us. We had all the explosive distractions playing out in Manchester, and a bunch of lupin hiding from the sounds of carnage so close.

  The notification hit us as we were finishing up securing the open rock and other materials pits. There were sectioned-off areas for salt, sand, gravel, fine gravel, and softer stones. None of it was difficult to secure, merely tedious to make sure nothing was hiding under a layer of rocks.

  As of 12 am on the international dateline, the first time zone has reached 100% saturation. In accordance with the Y.A.H.W.E.H Multiversal Peace Accord protocols, all portals in affected time zones are cut off. Over the course of the next 24 hours, all time zones should reach 100% mana saturation. All interdimensional portals will be cut off for a period of no less than 4 Earth years when an area reaches the 100% threshold. At that time, representatives of the system will meet with any surviving governments to advise them about how to complete their integration into the multiverse.